How to Rank Your Website for Local Search Terms

If you have a website and want people in your area to be able to find it through Google or any other search engine, the concept of local SEO is one of the most important things you can focus on. This is because even with a great website, you will still be in direct competition with other local companies for clients or customers, so you need to make sure that you use localized keywords within your site to allow people searching for your keyword plus your location to be able to find your website.

For those who are not familiar with SEO, it stands for search engine optimization and involves using specific keywords and other aspects of your website to ensure your website appears in the first few pages of the search engine results for your specific keywords. If you own an online business and do not care where your customers come from, then local SEO will not be important for your business. However, if you are offering an offline service and want to attract potential clients or customers from your area, then you will need to focus on local keywords to ensure that your website appears in the rankings for those specific keywords.

Many people resort to hiring an SEO company to do all of this for them, however many of them can be quite expensive and some even want a percentage of any profits you make from the customers who find your website due to their SEO work. Fortunately, local SEO is not all that difficult, especially if you live in a smaller community or are in a less competitive field, and most people with even a small amount of internet knowledge can usually run an effective local SEO campaign on their own, without the need to hire an expensive SEO firm.

If you follow these few tips, you will quickly increase the amount of local traffic to your site and hopefully see some results in terms of increased profits.

The most important aspect of local SEO is to not only include your keywords in your website title, meta description, and content, but to also include the location (your city or state) that you wish to target. This will help ensure that your website shows up on the first few pages of the search engine results when people search for your keyword and location. However, it is important to pay attention to the keyword density, as having your keyword and location too many times in your content is a quick way to get your site discredited, down ranked, and possibly even blacklisted by the search engines. With the most recent Google algorithm, you should shoot for a keyword density of between one and two percent in all of your content. Any higher and you risk being downgraded by the search engines.

List Your Website in All of the Major Local Directories with a Link Back To Your Website

The next step is to search online and find any and all major local directories or local business listings, and then get your website listed on them. When doing this, it is important to make sure that each directory will allow you to place a back link to your website. Most people will not actually find your website through these local directories, but they still have a large influence on where your website will appear in the search results, so its necessary to sign up on all of the major directories for your area as this is a very important step in link building.

Get Your Website Listed In Google Maps by Submitting Your Business to Google Places

The last step to your Local SEO campaign is to get your website listed on Google Maps, which will then allow people searching for your local keywords to view your business and where you are located. Many people only use Google Maps to find local businesses and do not even bother with the rest of the search results, as Google Maps often gives them all of the information they need, including reviews, address, and website. In order to get your business listed in Google Maps, you will need to go to the Google Places website and submit all of your companys information. All of these steps are incredibly important to any local SEO campaign, but often Google Maps is the best possible way to allow people in your area to quickly and easily find your business information and website address, and this should result in increased traffic to your website as well as people who will then contact you directly either through a phone call or by simply stopping by your business if you allow walk-ins. Therefore, when submitting your website to Google Places, it is incredibly important to read through all of the relevant information several times to make sure it is entirely accurate and you didnt make any mistakes.

This Guest post was written by Lucas Raby who is the owner and chief SEO Strategist at GPSEO.com.au who provide high quality SEO services and outstanding results. If you are looking for an ethical and professional company to help you achieve great results in your local niche, visit their website at http://www.gpseo.com.au